No Implants, No Bra, No Problem: The Triple Bra Breast Lift Explained [Austin Hayes, MD, Portland]

Eva Sheie (00:00):
You're listening to Where Before Meets After. What about women who want their breasts to look better, but they absolutely don't want implants? Are they finding you?

Dr. Hayes (00:10):
One of the things about a breast lift that's most important for people to know is that a breast lift obviously lifts the breast, takes a nipple that's lower, puts it into the center of the breast and then removes the extra skin. And I think the key thing for people to know is that it never looks like an implant. It doesn't create the roundness of an implant. But that's not to say that an implant looks best. So it's whatever somebody's taste is. If they have the taste that they like, a rounder, more full upper look, great. That's probably an implant with their breast lift. But many people don't want that for one reason or another. And I tell people, I think a beautiful breast that has a beautiful shape, I don't care. This is my own opinion. So I don't care what size that breast is.

Dr. Hayes (00:51):
It's beautiful. It could be A, B, C, D, whatever. So as long as they understand what a breast lift truly looks like, then of course that's what I offer. And so I came up with a way of ... And again, I can't speak for every surgeon. I'm not trying to speak for any other surgeons other than myself, but many breast lifts are lifted only by the skin. So the nipple is moved up. The breast tissue is just kind of pushed up and the skin is tightened. But the skin, if the skin could hold a breast, they wouldn't need a breast lift. There would be no sagging. And so I don't think it works very well. It's kind of been a seven-year journey of figuring out how to support the bottom of the breast. And so I figured out a way that works for me to kind of create essentially three.

Dr. Hayes (01:33):
I call it a triple bra. The name's pretty, name's not very inventive, but essentially I have three natural layers of tissue that I've, one, learned from somebody, but then the two additionals created or came up with a way to support the bottom of the breast. And so the breast looks more braless. It looks more full compared to a typical breast lift. Many times when I show an after of a breast lift, people wonder if there's an implant there when in fact there's not, but it's just the extra support that my breast lifts have. And so people are beginning to find me for this operation specifically.

Eva Sheie (02:05):
Does anyone else do this kind of breast lift that you're aware of?

Dr. Hayes (02:09):
So there's a plastic surgeon in Sydney named Michael Marashnik, who I don't know how I stumbled across him. I think it must have been Instagram, but he talked about how he likes to secure the fold. So I think that there are probably many surgeons that secure the fold. And what I specifically came up with, I've never seen it written about. So to my knowledge, no, I'm the only one that does that. But there are a lot of plastic surgeons that are ... I think probably presumably all plastic surgeons who care about breast lift know what it looks like when you're done with the surgery, what it looks like very early, and then what it looks like truly. Meaning three, six months later, the breast tissue falls out of the bottom of the fold, the scar rides up, the breast slides down the torso, volume is lost from the cleavage, volume is lost from the top.

Dr. Hayes (02:58):
So we have a look that is counter to what we're trying to achieve. For me, I solve that problem with the double bra and the triple bra, but other surgeons are solving that problem with mesh. So they're using mesh to support the breast tissue so that ... I've just seen a couple videos and some drawings, but essentially what they're doing is creating a hammock out of mesh so that their breast tissue can't fall against the fold. I don't have anywhere to put mesh. I love mesh. I use it for augmentation all the time, but in my lifts, I don't need it. I don't have anywhere to put it because I know the breast tissue's going to fall, but my support comes from natural tissue instead of from a mesh barrier.

Eva Sheie (03:40):
Thanks for listening. I'm your host, Eva Sheie. Follow the show and submit questions for our experts at wherebeforemeetsafter.com. Where Before Meets After is a production of The Axis.